COLLINS COLUMN: 2012 was truly unforgettable

Watching thousands of teary-eyed former Penn Staters and somber former players filing into their seats at the public memorial service for legendary Nittany Lions coach Joe Paterno.

When we look back on years and decades and lifetimes, memories like this elbow their way ahead of the others. These are the moments that define times, define history, and in my case, may someday be part of the storybook that defines a career.

I'll never forget where I was when I got a text message that contained the following three words: "Doc Mattioli died." Because it was in that moment.

And in that moment, enveloped by emotions still raw over Paterno's passing, I first began forming this column, the last one I'd write in 2012. Because in my mind, there was no way - none - these two events wouldn't rank high on our compilation of the year's most important stories.

In a matter of four days in January, we lost two titans. It wouldn't be a stretch to write a column arguing that no two men have done more to bring a national consciousness of sport to Northeast and Central Pennsylvania.

As meaningful and as poignant as Paterno's death was to Penn Staters and college football, Dr. Joseph Mattioli's was to the Poconos and stock car racing. That's why, while Jimmy Cefalo and Tony Pittman and Michael Robinson relayed emotional stories about what Paterno meant to them, I couldn't get that dentist who turned a spinach farm into a 2.5-mile triangular raceway in Long Pond away from the forefront of my mind. Anybody who has ever been to a race at Pocono International Raceway knows his impact. Anybody who knows the stronghold NASCAR still has on fans in this area has been impacted by his life's work.

Today, you'll read the results of The Times-Tribune sports staff's voting on the top 10 stories of 2012. You won't be surprised to learn here that Paterno's death registered as a major part of the story we voted the biggest of the year, the battle with scandal and sanctions and change and, ultimately, a step toward rebirth at Penn State.

What you may be surprised to hear is that Mattioli's passing did not make the top 10. It just missed, coming in at No. 11.

Now is a good time to remind you: I don't exactly enjoy the process of naming the top 10 stories. I get the fact that everyone has different opinions, different tastes, different ideas of what are and aren't important stories. But inevitably, two or three stories I consider important get left off the list for two or three stories I consider simply interesting. In my mind, that makes a list unpredictable. It doesn't necessarily make it good.

This is why I took a strong look at the stories that did crack the top 10 by the staff's consensus this year, trying to figure out how something as historic as Doc Mattioli's death didn't register with most of the staff the same way some high school softball or basketball or soccer games did.

And I think I have the answer.

Each of the top six stories on this year's final list are as much about triumphs of the human spirit as they are about wins and losses or scandals and tragedies. Penn State's tumultuous 2012, which started with Bill O'Brien's hiring as head coach, continued with Paterno's death, the Freeh report, transfers and the sentencing of Jerry Sandusky, will be remembered just as much for how it ended on that chilly November afternoon against Wisconsin, when the Nittany Lions beat the eventual Big Ten champs on an overtime field goal to finish the season with perhaps the unlikeliest eight-win season in program history.

There is Matt McGloin, the one-time walk-on who ended his Penn State career with statistically the best single-season performance by a quarterback in program history, shattering nine school passing records, tying another, and winning the Burlsworth Trophy for best player in the nation who began his career without a scholarship. There is the Mountain View boys soccer team, which overcame its coach's late-season suspension for unsportsmanlike behavior to win the area's first-ever state soccer championship.

The Dunmore Bucks battled early injuries and overcame them to play for the Class A football championship. The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees battled, well, every odd imaginable and still did what they always seem to do, win the International League North Division despite playing every game on the road. The only thing they seemed to lose in 2012 was the Yankee name, becoming the RailRiders in November.

Then, in the PIAA Cross Country Championships, Holy Cross' Rico Galassi and Elk Lake's Luke Jones did the unthinkable, finishing first and second in the Class A title race.

These weren't exactly sad stories. These made us, in the end, feel pretty good. Good about ourselves. Good about our kids. Good about our area. Good about what can happen even when we can't imagine it will.

Maybe, we were just ready for stories like this to be what defined a year.

Maybe, so much bad has happened in the world that we found ourselves pulled toward the good. Personally, I found some of these stories interesting. I didn't necessarily find them all as important as the death of an icon like Doc Mattioli. But I'm not certain anymore that's the point.

My famous reminder to colleagues when voting starts for the year-in-review list is that we should be ranking important, impactful and insightful stories, and not necessarily accomplishments. But there are so many good stories in accomplishments.

The Valley View girls softball team came within one inning, one epically close play at the plate, of winning the PIAA Class AAA championship. But the courage and determination that team showed throughout its gritty run, and the class it demonstrated afterward, caused me to rank that story higher than any non-Penn State-related story we covered in 2012.

Scranton Prep swimmer Rebekah Campo made the list as much for the serious illness she overcame in the preseason as for winning gold at the state championships. And who would have thought, when the spotlight was shining brightest, that Dallas Ely and Josh Kosin could lead Montrose and Holy Cross into the semifinals of the girls and boys PIAA basketball tournaments, pulling off dramatic upsets along the way?

You can debate the long-term impact of each of those stories in relation to other events that didn't make the list. But who can argue how they made us feel? I'm not sure 2012 will go down in my mind as the year of the feel-good story, and I'm not certain you should read these pages today and take that opinion away for yourself. Because there's no replacing a Joe Paterno.

There's no replacing a Doc Mattioli. There's no replacing a Frank Pazzaglia, who is walking away from the high school football sidelines after more than 40 years and 300 wins and a standard of excellence left at Valley View and Mid Valley. I can't imagine a 2013 without any of them. I don't necessarily want to, either.

But I look forward to the next 365 days knowing that, in the last 366, nothing was impossible. It's talk about hope, in a time when we all sure could use a little.

DONNIE COLLINS is a columnist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com

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